ive been experimenting with minimalist/simple almost vape designs, with a little luck, although im trying to make each build better and more effecient. the design ive come up with right now is to suspend a cardboard or wood plate over a heat source with a hole in the bottom, a heavy duty foil bell (same kind I hookah with), and a glass bowl or dish on top. I was thinking that hookah coals might do an exceptional job in this design, as they burn slightly hotter than vape temp, so with the bowl suspended at the right height from the heat source it should heat up to decent vaping temps, and would be safer/better than lighters, candles and traditional sources of fire. granted a soldering iron is still probably the best for this application, I think suspending over a hookah coal would work well, granting that the chambers are sealed well enough to prevent C02 from entering into the smoke chamber from the coal, and natural coals would be preferrable to instant lights for the same reason. eventually im going to do a legit build with a soldering iron myself eventually, but it seems the only problem with these simple designs is the heat source, but seriously people, there must be some safe and effective way of consistently acheiving close to proper vaping temps. lighters are far too hot, and many other traditional heat sources for smoking are either too hot, inconsistent, or unhealthy to inhale, but there must be some clean burning fuel that burns at near proper temperature (180-200 degrees farenheit I think?) at that point it would merely be a point of safely suspending the weed over the heat so it could be baked, granted eventually it would start burning after prolonged cooking, but you could just stop inhaling by then if you cared, because it heats even enough if grinded first... ive seen people heat up metal with a butane torch and light bongs for a vape-like smoke. another possibility I thought about was to take a hot plate (like the kind you bring camping to cook with, a single oven burner thing), and just... basically cook it and capture the vapor from that. it wouldnt be too hard to suspend a chamber over the hot plate the same way as over a flame or coal, and you could always use mason jars to this end and put some water in the bottom (like if you were preparing substrate for growing shrooms) and figure out the temp to heat it to get the jar the right temp, youd be producing some pretty consistent results. I think a lot of common sense options have been ruled out for vaporizer design. with our current knowledge of chemistry and physics, combined with cheap technology (cmon people, producing heat? this is 2012, we can do that now) certainly we can acheive some sort of revised hookah that uses different energy sources. although I do maintain a heat gun or soldering iron would probably serve more ideally, i still think this is possible.
I made a home made vape once similar to the bud toaster on FC. It's a glass tube with a nicrome wire spiraled around it. Run find the right level of current and you can get clouds off of it.
I made one once out of an appliance HeatGun, gatorade bottles, alum. foil, and a hose. Of course this was a very long time ago. I still remember the vape very well. It was excellent. Takes a bit of time to learn though what the proper heat setting is. Typically with home made vapes, you're unable to accurately depict the temperature at which your medium is at.
sorry to double post - yes, you say you have a heatgun. this was the design i used: My heatgun was able to fit perfectly into the mouth of a gatorade bottle. I created multiple layers of 'screens' with aluminum foil, and multiple more ontop/beneath the herb with real screens from a hardware store. I thenmade a perfect hold in the bottom and inserted the tube. SO basicly, I would do this: Load your herb in the middle of the screens. place two underneath, and two ontop. then, heat your heatgun up till the coils inside are red hot. Turn it off, and turn it on again for about 2-3 seconds. Then, get in position;put the heatgun ontop of the gatorade bottle and align it inside of it, then give it another quick turn on and inhale as hard as you can. Might take some practice not burning your bowl/getting it to the perfect temp, but so long as you don't go over 450, you won't get anything malicious from the foil or the plastic.
i already had a heat gun (cheap wagner ht1000) i used for tinting, so i did this... the heat inlet through the big side, and from where theres the 1/2" to 1/4" reducer, i put screens on both ends and put the bud in there. fits 1g of bud, not packed. i had a 1/4" x 5" on a volcano bag i used. low setting on the heat gun was 750*F but with it being reduced so much, it got to only 350*F at the end. used my digital thermometer to measure it. it didnt combust, and was able to fill up three 3foot long bags with 1g. and three of us got baked off of just one bag. when we empty'd the bud chamber, it was a milk chocolate brown, kinda looking like tobacco. oh, and i torched down the piping and couplers til red hot, boiled it, and reapeated the process to make sure all of the oil from production was burnt off.
You can make a MFLB for around 20 dollars, with materials to spare and make more. You need a block of wood. Some steal screen (Mine from a steel tea ball.) Some copper pipe hooks (I think) and some rechargeable batteries. Also some plastic or glass to go on top (I used a bit i cut from an old CD case.) Check out this instructable. http://i.imgur.com/mBUOy.jpg And this thread on reddit may be of use to you. DIY Launch Box - Pictures / Video / Materials Breakdown / Tools Breakdown / Dimensions Diagram / Tips, etc.. : trees You are welcome good sir. Have a fine day.
I made a vaporizer with a few differnet glass rods, a ceramic heating element from a heater that was made well, also used a pots style adjustment tronic, and a shoe.
